Inviting African-American Mothers to Sell Their Breast Milk, and Profiting

What is a for-profit company with no African-American employees, no African-American board members and no meaningful connections to African-American mothers doing starting a campaign targeting low-income African-American mothers in Detroit to sell their breast milk under the promise of economic empowerment? That’s a question that deserves an answer, particularly since the company promoting this “pull yourself up by your own nursing bra straps” approach intends to sell that milk at a profit.

Medolac, an Oregon-based company working in conjunction with the Clinton Global Initiative, says it will “seek to increase breast-feeding rates among urban African-American women” and promote “healthy behavior and prolonged breast-feeding within their communities” by starting a local campaign to grow members of the Mothers Milk Cooperative, the only milk bank owned and operated by nursing mothers. The Mothers Milk Cooperative, established with the Medolac founder Elena Medo’s participation in 2013, pays approved members who have been screened and have completed blood testing $1 an ounce for their milk. In turn, the cooperative has an exclusive producer/processor agreement with Medolac, which processes the milk into a commercially sterile, shelf-stable product and sells it to hospitals for about $7 an ounce — a 600 percent markup.

Medolac’s promises of more breast-feeding, economic empowerment and Clinton Global Initiative’s backing make this plan sound like welcome news. Detroit has one of the lowest breast-feeding rates for black women in the nation: under 40 percent, compared with 70 percent for white, non-Hispanic mothers in the same city. But while there may be an argument to be made for paying women for breast milk, the economic and racial elements of the Medolac plan make it look more like a modern-day breast milk marketing scheme than a public benefit.

After years of researching the cultural landscape of racial disparities in breast-feeding rates, I see deep-rooted problems with this plan. Targeting low-income Detroit women with the lure of climbing out of poverty by selling their surplus milk raises many ethical questions. It’s one thing to commodify mother’s milk, but to try to commodify a group of women — specifically black women, who already have a difficult history with breast-feeding — seems, a bit, well, sour. It’s all too easy to imagine how Medolac’s plans could become a part of a continuing racial and economic divide in Detroit and nationwide rather than part of the solution.

Ms. Medo argues that paying women for their breast milk will increase the likelihood that they will breast-feed their own babies, and lengthen the duration of that breast-feeding relationship. That’s a claim with no research behind it as yet. “It just makes sense,” she said in a recent interview.

Would financially strapped mothers, who may qualify for the Women, Infants and Children Supplemental Nutrition Program and the free formula it provides, have an incentive to breast-feed longer, or supplement with more formula while selling their own milk? Ms. Medo contends that her application process can screen out mothers who are not sending their excess, but the mothers Ms. Medo is focusing on now are not mothers who live in communities where breast-feeding is the social norm. They are mothers Ms. Medo hopes to encourage to breast-feed in part for the economic benefit, and that benefit could also prove tempting.

The argument that selling breast milk will increase the economic empowerment of the low-income mothers of Detroit is similarly speculative. Rare is the mother who will produce enough excess milk, at $1 an ounce, to affect her family’s economic situation significantly. According to the Human Milk Banking Association of America, the average mother produces 200 ounces of oversupply every two months.

As it stands now, Medolac is more interested in the milk of Detroit’s mothers than it is in their babies. Medolac’s business model relies on accumulating more mothers’ milk to sell to hospitals all over the United States and potentially globally. The milk that Medolac collects from the not-yet-breast-feeding-enough mothers of Detroit will not go to the babies of Detroit, where the infant mortality rate is a horrific 15 deaths per 1,000 births, the highest of any American city. Ms. Medo said she currently has no hospitals buying her product in Detroit, and many urban and publicly funded hospitals might not be able to afford Medolac’s product.

Those are problems that could be best addressed by women living and working in the community, but as of this writing, Medolac has not reached out to the many African-American groups doing powerful work in Detroit with black mothers and breast-feeding. “We’ve never heard of Medolac or this plan,” said Kiddada Green, founding executive director of the Detroit-based Black Mothers Breast-feeding Association, a respected local leader and a nationally recognized resource on breast-feeding support groups.

Increasing breast-feeding rates among low-income African American women, in Detroit and all over the country, is a goal I support. But there’s more to that effort than numbers. So far, Medolac is taking a very privileged “we know what you need” stance. If you want to help people, shouldn’t you reach out to the people you intend to help first? Ms. Medo says meeting with organizations in Detroit that work with mothers and families is her next move. That sounds backward to me, and the lack of a better approach to the community makes me question Medolac’s mission, and the Clinton Global Initiative’s involvement, in a way that I would not if that mission involved the community it purports to serve.

Editors' Note: December 9, 2014After this post was published, editors discovered that Ms. Seals Allers—who is, in addition to her work as a journalist, an advocate for breastfeeding and infant health in African American communities—has worked with Kidadda Green, who is quoted in the piece. That connection should have been disclosed.

Correction: December 3, 2014An earlier version of this post misstated Medolac's markup on breast milk acquired from the Mothers Milk Cooperative. It is 600 percent, not 85 percent.

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We're all living the family dynamic, as parents, as children, as siblings, uncles and aunts. At Motherlode, lead writer and editor KJ Dell’Antonia invites contributors and commenters to explore how our families affect our lives, and how the news affects our families—and all families. Join us to talk about education, child care, mealtime, sports, technology, the work-family balance and much more